


The Future As B-Movie

by Las



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Vampires, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-09
Updated: 2010-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 19:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/78974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Is he okay?' Dean asks, looking at the rearview mirror. The front of Cas's shirt is soaked scarlet and he's got the thousand-yard stare of the almost dead." Written for a sharp_teeth@LJ prompt in which vampires have developed a taste for angel blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future As B-Movie

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 5x10.

Dean can't believe this shit.

Look, it's the end of the world, for real this time, not just the little localized disasters here and there that were weirdly easy to contain. The end times have truly arrived and no one can pretend anymore. The last news story Dean saw on TV before TV cut out completely was about the moon being cleft in twain.

In fucking twain.

The point is, Team Free Will is trying their hardest, they really are, but this is baby's first apocalypse, and you can't just salt and burn rivers of blood or deadly plague or boiling seas. They're kind of out of their depth here.

Also: croats. Croats _everywhere_. Plus, on top of it all: vampires.

"Dean, behind you!" Sam yells.

"I got it!" Dean yells back, and gets it. "Get Cas out of here!"

What the fuck are vampires even doing still around?

"Grargh!" one yells, and Dean kicks it in the face.

There are still werewolves. There are still ghosts. There are still wendigos and rakshasas and sidhe. Not a lot, but occasionally they'd come across one on a supply run, as desperate and scared as anyone else, and Dean almost feels bad when they kill it. The apocalypse is shitty for everyone, even for monsters.

Dean spares a glance over his shoulder and sees Sam practically dragging a blood-soaked Castiel away from the scene. It kind of looks like there's more blood outside his body than inside, and Dean tries not to wonder: is this it? Is this it for Cas?

Too bad vampires don't feed on croats, Dean muses as he stabs the last vampire with a knife they dipped in dead man's blood. Then you can just make them fight each other. Vampires versus zombies! Who would win?

Probably ninjas, Dean thinks. He turns around and runs after Sam and Cas.

+

The vampires are becoming a problem.

There's more and more of them each day, which was just weird, but then they captured one of the sons of bitches in the woods and tried to shake some intel out of him -- where's your nest, you fucker, etc. -- and a horrifying sort of light was shed. The vamp laughed in the insane, arrogant vampire way and babbled on about how he used to be human, used to be normal before the beginning of the end, with a job and a life and all that crap. He used to be like them. (Dean smirked and didn't correct him.) But then the apocalypse came and every skeleton in the world's closet started walking the earth. The guy thought maybe he should hedge his bets.

It took a second for Dean to realize what he was saying. "You became a vampire willingly?"

The vamp said, "Bingo."

"Why'd you do it?" Sam asked.

"First, you tell me what drugs your friend is injecting into his veins, because _oof_, I have not tasted blood so sweet in--"

"Why'd you become a vampire?" Dean barked.

"To survive," he shrugged. "Any life is better than no life. This is one more rung up the food chain and it's the best chance we got." The vampire grinned, showing killing teeth. "Tell you what. Let me go and I'll turn you too."

"Sorry," Dean said flatly, "turning into a monster to save my own ass isn't really on my to-do list."

"What, you guys aren't afraid of dying?"

Dean and Sam exchanged glances. They had little sympathy for people afraid of death. Dean held out his hand, and his brother handed him the blood-dipped knife.

"To conquer death," Dean said, "you only have to die."

And that was the end of that vamp. They watched him writhe and scream as the poison spread through his body, letting him stew a little, get what was coming to him. At some point, Sam sighed and commenced decapitation.

"Dude," Sam said, hacking at the last ropes of muscle that connected the head. "Did you just quote Jesus Christ Superstar before killing a vampire?"

"What? No, that was like Walt Whitman or something."

"No, I'm pretty sure that was Jesus Christ Superstar."

Dean glowered at him. "Do I _look_ like the kind of guy who goes around quoting musicals about Jesus?"

Sam shrugged and stood up, covered in blood. "Apparently guys who go around quoting musicals about Jesus look like you."

"How the hell do you know the words to Jesus Christ Superstar anyway?" Dean asked suspiciously.

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked smugger than vampires. "How do _you_?"

"It's Whitman, dude. Or, like, Thoreau."

"It's definitely not Thoreau."

"Then it's fucking Euclid, okay!"

"Euclid was a mathematician."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You know what, fuck you. And fuck Jesus Christ Superstar."

So they returned to Camp Chitaqua, where everyone gave the brothers' blood-covered state nothing more than a passing glance. They had all seen worse. Sam went off to get a bucket of water for washing up, but Dean first stopped by the infirmary, where earth's most recently minted human laid prone on a bed, recovering from multiple lacerations to the neck and shoulders.

"How're you holding up?" Dean asked.

"Better," Cas said, staring at the ceiling.

"We got him. Thought you'd like to know. We got the bastard that did this to you."

Cas didn't answer right away, all hopped up on painkillers. There was a glazed look in his eyes when he looked at Dean, that single-minded blue-eyed stare. There was a softness in them now. Mortality, perhaps. Or maybe just some good ol' fashioned suffering.

"I still can't hear them," Cas said quietly. "I can't feel them."

"It's okay, buddy," Dean said, because he didn't know what else to say.

Cas said, "I didn't think they'd actually leave."

Becky bustled over and, to Dean's relief, kicked Dean out. Cas needed his rest, Becky insisted. And no vampire blood near the infirmary, it's totally unsanitary. And Chuck had been trying to talk to Dean all day about the next supply run, had he found him?

"No," Dean admitted, and Becky glared at her least favorite Winchester.

Whatever, Dean thought, and went off to get washed up.

+

"Cas? Cas, stay with me, Cas," Sam says in the back of the jeep as Dean speeds through twisty, bumpy roads back to Chitaqua. They left half the salvage back there, but they can always come back for it. Cas comes first.

"Is he okay?" Dean asks, looking at the rearview mirror. The front of Cas's shirt is soaked scarlet and he's got the thousand-yard stare of the almost dead. Despite his brother's best efforts, Cas is fading fast, too fast.

"Just drive, Dean," Sam says tightly.

"If Cas--"

"_Drive!_" Sam shouts.

Dean drives.

+

"I think," Dean says hoarsely, as he and Sam hover outside the camp's makeshift ER passing a flask back and forth, "that Cas shouldn't leave the camp anymore if we can help it."

"The vampires zero in on him like _that_," Sam says, snapping his fingers. "There's something about angel blood, man, it drives the vamps nuts. Cas might as well be wrapped in neon signs that say 'here we are!'."

"I thought he wasn't an angel anymore."

"He's still angelic. He still has those spidey senses that can tell who's a demon and who's infected or whatever."

Above them, stars begin to peek through the twilight sky. The constant bustle of the camp takes on a different quality at night, a little saner almost. Everyone is just thinking about dinner and sleep, like the darkness blinds their paranoia because you can't fear what you can't see. If you can't see it, you can pretend it's not there.

"Dean," Sam says. "Every time the vampires come after Cas, there's more and more of them."

Dean says nothing.

"Every time, they don't wait as long before they attack."

He takes another swallow from the flask.

"It's only a matter of time," Sam says, "before the vampires attack the camp looking for him. He's not safe here." And neither is anyone else, Sam doesn't say. The longer Cas stays here, the longer he puts everyone else in danger.

Dean says quietly, "I know."

+

"Fifteen minutes," Becky warns. "Or _I'll_ have to rescue him from _you_ guys."

Dean and Sam shuffle to the bed they have come to think of Cas's, and Dean forces a smile onto his face. "Cas."

Cas smiles weakly. "Dean. Sam."

"Are you okay?" Sam asks.

"Of course he's okay," Dean scoffs. "Look at him. He's practically chomping at the bit to kick more vamp ass."

"Thank you," Cas says, "back in the woods. Thank you for not... Thank you for saving me."

"No need to thank us," Sam says.

"We're just glad you're still alive, you son of a bitch," Dean says, and ignores Sam's sidelong glance.

+

The next time Dean visits, he's on his own and he stays for longer. The painkillers have got Cas waxing theological again, but Dean doesn't mind so much, as long as Cas isn't dead. Besides, it doesn't really matter what Cas thinks about God and the angels anyway, because it's not like any of them are gonna show up and go on the defensive.

"God made angels from the first light, Dean," Cas is saying. "He made me from the first handful of light that He separated from the darkness, and I was made to love Him, I was made for faith. I am _of_ these things, and for them."

Dean shrugs. "You're still the worst vampire slayer ever I've ever met."

"If the needle is worthy, be the thread," Cas continues as if Dean hadn't spoken.

"The hell are you talking about?"

"My Father is gone," he says, morphine-fuzzed and heartsick. "My brothers, my family. They've left me here. I was made to worship, but there's nothing here for me to love and nothing to have faith in."

"Cas--"

"Except you."

Dean looks at him, heart in his mouth and breaking a little, a helpless warmth inside him shaking a little, and Cas regards him with such undisguised devotion that Dean feels dwarfed in the face of it. He wishes he can deserve this. He wishes he can give back something half as true. Cas is too good for this world, and Dean was the one who pushed him to fall into it in the first place, years ago.

Dry-throated, Dean whispers, "You can't say things like that."

"Why not?"

"Because," as Dean brushes the bangs off of Cas's forehead, as Cas's cheeks flush with fever, "it makes you sound like a pansy."

+

Becky finds them later both asleep, Cas in the bed and Dean in his chair, but with his arm resting on the mattress and his fingers twined around Cas's.

It makes her nostalgic for LJ fandom a little bit, and then she realizes she hasn't thought about Livejournal in years. Wow. The Internet. Yeah, that happened once.

Becky starts composing an LJ post in her head as she gently drapes a blanket over Dean. _Hey guys, I just got the CRAZIEST idea for a fic! What if the croatoan virus made everyone a zombie, and also there are vampires?! And then our heroes save the day! With gay love, natch. Who wants to beta?_ Mood: exhausted. Music: arguments about rationing the last bottle of antiseptic. Location: hell on earth.

She needs a goddamn vacation.

+

Sam asks, "What are we going to do about Cas?"

"I don't know," Dean mumbles, rubs his face. "I don't fucking know."

+

A few days later, only Risa comes back from the supply run, and even then just barely. The last thing she says before they drag her into surgery is _vampires, fucking vampires_ and Sam looks at Dean, alarmed.

"Dean," he begins.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean mutters. "I know."

Fuck.

+

Cas frowns. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing," Dean lies.

The point, Dean thinks, is to conquer death _before_ you have to die. So you don't _have_ to die.

Cas is pale and anemic on the hospital bed, and Dean thinks, what the hell does Andrew Lloyd Webber know about killing vampires anyway.

+

"If maybe..." Sam hesitates. "If Cas, you know. What if he just... disappears? Maybe we should--maybe he--"

"Don't say it."

"Dean, I'm just saying, we have to consider all angles. If Cas is dead--"

"Shit, Sammy, we'll figure out, okay?" Dean snaps.

"When?" Sam demands.

"Soon."

He can tell Sam doesn't believe him.

"Soon," Dean promises, and he's not sure he believes himself either.

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel, co-written with unoshot, can be read here: [Bring Out Your Dead](http://lassiterfics.livejournal.com/139808.html)


End file.
